World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) by Richard Mason Read Free Book Online Page A

was a painter, I would paint pictures of hills. Why don’t you paint hills? Why do you want to paint inside a bar?”
    â€œBecause I’m really only interested in people,” I said. “I think there’s more beauty in people.”
    â€œIt is funny your coming to live here. Nobody has ever lived here before. I must introduce you to the other girls—they will be very interested.”
    Later several of the girls came and joined us, including Typhoo, Little Alice, and Wednesday Lulu. Little Alice was a plump little partridge of a girl, loaded with bangles and dangling earrings, who shook like a jelly with perpetual giggles. Wednesday Lulu was silent and watchful, with a round smooth face in which her eyes looked like slits cut from an alabaster mask. She never spoke without deliberation. Typhoo, however, gabbled irrepressibly, and was presently launched into an account of a curious experience the night before, when she had been told by one of the waiters that there was a man outside the bar who wanted a girl but refused to come in. Typhoo had gone out onto the quay and found the man seated in a rickshaw. He had been the captain of a merchant ship. She had been very impressed.
    â€œSure, he was proper ship captain—big man,” she said. She talked with the vivacity and gesticulations of a Latin. “Sure, proper big man. He say, ‘How much all night?’ I say, ‘Hundred Hong Kong dollar,’ because a big man like that must get plenty lot of money. But he get chokka, he say, ‘What you take me for? Yankee? Me no Yankee—me English. I give you thirty Hong Kong dollar.’ I say, ‘What for? Short-time?’ He say, ‘No, all night.’ I say, ‘I know you’re ship captain but you must be crazy in the head!’”
    They had finally compromised at sixty dollars—about four pounds—and had gone up to one of the rooms. Presently, after the Captain had worked off his first ardor, Typhoo had felt like a gossip with her girl friends before settling down for the night, and had asked the Captain to excuse her for half an hour. However, upon reaching the bar she had found herself without her handbag, which she had left upstairs—and which contained, among other items, the Captain’s sixty dollars paid in advance. But after all, she had thought, a ship’s captain was a man to be trusted. She wouldn’t bother to go back for it. However, half an hour later, returning to duty, she had been greeted on the landing by the floor boy, announcing, “Typhoo, your boy friend went off twenty minutes ago.” Well! So he had pinched the money after all! A ship’s captain—a big man like that! She had dashed along to the room. Her handbag had still been on the dressing table where she had left it. She had wrenched it open—and gaped in astonishment. The money was still there—every cent of it!
    And now Typhoo was really worried. If he had not stolen anything, why on earth had he gone off? She could not understand.
    â€œHe pay out plenty money altogether, you know,” she said. “Rickshaw, ten dollar. Room, ten dollar. Make-lovey, sixty dollar. Altogether eighty dollar! All right, then why he run off after one short-time? Why? What happen?”
    Little Alice was simmering with giggles. “Maybe he no like the way you make lovey,” she said, and the giggles boiled over.
    Typhoo grinned. “Everybody like the way I make lovey. Plenty boys tell me, ‘Sure, you got a funny face, Typhoo, but I sooner have a short-time with you than all night with a big-bosom Yankee film star!’”
    Wednesday Lulu, who had been thinking very hard, said carefully, “I think he had a wife.”
    â€œThat ship captain?” Typhoo said. “Sure, he told me. He got a wife back in England.”
    â€œThen perhaps it was like this,” Wednesday Lulu said solemnly. “First he wants a girl very badly, so he